


If We Hold On Together

by Ihc



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies), Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Blue is a badass, Canon-Typical Violence, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not Really Character Death, Raptordad, almost canon compliant, raptor dad, velociraptors are much more loyal then people give them creddit for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-04-28 18:04:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5100449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihc/pseuds/Ihc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hybrid is dead, the park is closed... now what? With financial crisis, escaped animals, and bloodsucking lawyers on the horizon, Owen and Claire aren't the only ones who have to stay together for survival.</p><p> </p><p>Rated T for violence, graphic depictions of injuries, characters saying naughty words, and come on the movie is rated PG-13 people</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Responsibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah... I watched the movie, and instantly fell in love with the Raptorsquad. Hell, I've been waiting for this for the better part of a decade, since I rewatched the original trilogy and thought: "You know, there have been people who've had positive relationships with lions, tigers, etc... there's no reason why it couldn't happen with raptors!"
> 
> And then soon as I finished the movie I knew I couldn't deal with the raptors being killed, and poor Blue being abandoned all alone and not knowing how to survive in the wild. But yeah, that's what fanfiction is for, right!
> 
> Also, I'd imagine the title is familiar to most of you: if it isn't, then your childhood was very sad and deprived. There's a mildly-interesting anecdote behind this: Jurassic World got me on a dinosaur kick, so I went back and rewatched a bunch of dinosaur movies, including The Land Before Time. I liked the soundtrack so much that I listened to it a large part of the time I was writing this story. So then, 2-1/2 chapters in, when I finally decided I had to stop putting off coming up with a title so I could publish the darn thing, I realized that I had the perfect one. Also, someone on a forum may have unfavorably compared the interaction between Rexy and Blue at the end to LBT (which is ridiculous). The title does become relevant later in the story though...

Owen’s gesture was simple, a faint shake of the head, but the regret in his eyes told Blue all she needed to know. He couldn’t help. At least, not right then. She didn’t understand what could be so important that it would make him leave them at a time like this, but she’d never understood what he did with the other humans that took up so much time. But as much as she wanted to chase the other three humans away and bury her head in his arms like a hatchling, she knew she had to trust him, just like he was trusting her. It was the same as always; when Owen had to leave, Blue was in charge. And now, that meant it was her job to take care of her siblings until he returned. She had to be strong for just a little longer.

As the raptor trotted off into the maze of steel, glass, and concrete, she felt a vague unease. The giant raptor was dead, and the other giant that looked a bit like the giant raptor but wasn’t a raptor wasn’t going to pick a fight any time soon. Besides, it probably wouldn’t stay in a place that smelled so strongly of humans. Most of the bad humans with thunder-sticks were dead – the pack had made sure of that – but more might come, and who know what else could be lurking inside the dark buildings? It would be best if they got out of this place and went home as soon as possible.

After retracing her steps to where the giant raptor had first attacked, Blue gave a pair of short barks, signaling the rest of the pack to gather. After a moment with no response, she followed it up with an “It’s safe” call. This time, she was answered with heart-rending cries of distress.

With a few exceptions, an injured animal of any species would instinctively hide any sign of weakness. To do otherwise would be like putting up a flashing neon billboard alerting any predators to an easy meal. This had been true hundreds of millions of years before the first dinosaurs, and would in all likelihood still be true hundreds of millions of years after. Even in social animals like raptors and humans this instinct was still present, and was what had kept Delta and Echo quiet while there was still a danger of attracting the giant raptor’s attention. But their voices had the unmistakable tone of an animal in so much pain that it bled through any façade of bravery.

For a moment, Blue panicked, head swiveling wildly from side to side, unsure who to go to first. Making a decision, she rushed to where Echo lay next to a large, shiny box and a destroyed window frame. As she approached, something stabbed into her foot, causing her to yelp and jump backwards. She approached again, more cautiously this time, and realized the ground was covered in shards of something see-through, like the blocks of ice they were sometimes given on especially hot days, but apparently very hard and sharp. With the amount of blood on the floor Echo must have been badly cut by the shards too, but her most obvious injury was even worse-looking and completely mysterious. All over the left side of her body the skin was discolored brown or even black, and in places the scales had been lifted into strange bumps… almost like _bubbles._ When Blue sniffed at the injury and nudged it with her snout, Echo squealed in protest, involuntarily lashed her tail, and seemed to stop herself just short of snapping at Blue. Evidently the wounds were extremely painful, and already had a strange, unpleasant scent, like sickness combined with… fire?

In fact, Echo had been thrown onto a gas grill during the fight with the I. rex, causing a mixture of grease and leftover gas to erupt into a fireball. She’d quickly skidded off the grill, and although even the brief exposure had inflicted serious burns, she’d been lucky enough to have her eyes shut and not breathe in any of the flames. But Blue had never seen an injury like this, and was completely confused and terrified by what had happened to her packmate. She was starting to regret letting Owen out of her sight.

Another shriek from somewhere behind Blue brought her back into focus. Right now she had to keep the pack together and alive until their alpha returned. She gave Echo a comforting nuzzle on her relatively unhurt face, then scanned the restaurant. Perfect! There were tables Echo could use to stay out of sight of any humans or predators that came looking for them. Blue pushed a couple over, throwing the chairs out of the way and sending the dishes left on top crashing to the floor. She gave a “come here!” bark and gestured to the rudimentary barricade with her head. Echo made a half-hearted attempt to get to her feet, but then slumped back to the floor with a soft whistling noise that was the raptor equivalent of a whimper. Their rudimentary language wasn’t as complex as that of dolphins, let alone humans, but “I can’t!” was an easy enough concept to communicate. It briefly crossed Blue’s mind that Echo might have been being intentionally difficult, but there was no way she’d still be lying on a floor covered with broken class if she could walk.

This was bad. Blue knew she had to check on Delta, but she couldn’t leave Echo here. Dragging the overturned tables to hide her would have been easy, but the sharp stuff covering the floor would still hurt Echo if she tried to move. Blue realized she would have to drag her sister to safety. There were two ways of doing so that she could imagine. The first was to wait by Echo’s side until she was calm enough to not try to kick Blue’s eyes out. Impossible. Blue could tell the only reason Echo wasn’t thrashing around in panic was because it was too painful to move; being manhandled without lashing out was out of the question. That left the second option: taking her by surprise. It worked surprisingly well. Blue was able to get a good grip on Echo’s tail the first try, and although the injured raptor screeched like a banshee and flailed wildly, only the backs of her legs were able to reach Blue’s head. 

But as Blue limped out of the demolished restaurant, her head spun and her vision split into two ghostly images. She stumbled sideways and sank to the ground, panting. Now that the adrenaline from the fight was wearing off, every part of her body was starting to hurt at once. Her right arm and tail felt like they were being ripped off whenever she moved them, and her left sickle claw and two fingers wouldn’t respond at all. Every time she breathed, her chest erupted in pain like she was being slammed into the wall over and over again. But her pack needed her. She forced herself to her feet and staggered towards the source of the second set of distress calls.

Delta was nearly buried underneath the wreckage of a booth filled with plastic toys of some sort. As soon as Blue pulled away the debris, all concern for her own injuries evaporated. If anything, Delta was even worse than Echo. She lay on her side in a pool of her own blood, staring up at Blue with terrified eyes. Her breathing was so shallow and rapid it almost looked like she was shivering but not breathing at all. Two curved rows of deep puncture wounds ran up her side. Worst of all though, her left leg was bent and twisted at a nauseating angle midway between the ankle and knee. A huge wound had been ripped open at the break, and white bones were visible in the mess of blood and torn muscle. Blue had seen injuries like this before, but only on prey that the pack was in the process of ripping apart. Seeing her sister like this was surreal, like something out of a dream. Again, Blue had to fight the urge to flee, to find Owen or even Barry and drag him back.

She settled for making a distress call of her own, raising her head to the sky and letting out an earsplitting shriek. There. Owen had better have heard that. At the very least, Charlie would. She seemed to have ignored Owen’s whistle, but even if she had returned home (the paddock), the call would be audible. Blue’s call was different from Delta’s or Echo’s, with an inflection that indicated the pack was in danger, not just an individual – the closest human translation would be “Help _me_ ” vs. “Help _us_.” She knew she was taking a risk of alerting other predators, but while a lone, injured raptor might be an easy meal a pack was definitely not.

She crouched down next to Delta and pressed her forehead against her sister’s, cooing softly. Delta gave a weak chirp in response. Blue didn’t know it, but the sound was actually different from what a “wild” raptor on Isla Sorna would have used to comfort a frightened chick – unconsciously she was mimicking the voices of her human packmates. She moved her snout downwards, licking away the blood from one of the puncture wounds on Delta’s shoulder and rapidly opening and shutting her jaws a fraction of an inch as if she were pulling some soft material between her teeth. This was a legacy from Blue’s “ancestors” one hundred million years earlier; somewhere in the de-extinction process InGen’s _Deinonychus_ , at the time classified as _Velociraptor antirrhoppus_ , had lost their feathers, but the preening instinct remained. She would have done the same thing with Echo, but she’d made it obvious that her wounds were extremely painful to have touched… plus, the sharp clear stuff had hurt enough when Blue stepped on it; she didn’t want pieces of it in her tongue.

As Blue worked, both raptors grew calmer. Delta’s pupils were still partially dilated in the park’s dim lights, but when Blue first found her the color in her eyes was barely visible.

Time passed. Blue went back and forth between Delta and Echo’s hiding places multiple times, but there was still no sign of Owen or Charlie. At first her absence was mostly annoying, but now Blue was beginning to worry. There was no way she couldn’t have heard her distress call, and by now any surviving members of the fat human’s pack would have escaped. Unless Charlie had wandered off and fallen asleep, she had to be in trouble, or – no, Blue didn’t want to think about it. The humans did have those strange shiny sticks. The pack had seen them carrying them around before, but dismissed them as no more important than the coverings humans wore over their bodies. But in the battle at the clearing, the humans had pointed the sticks at the raptors, and they’d made deafening BANG!s and flashes of light, and the giant raptor had roared in pain. At the time, Blue’s pack was too frightened by the sudden sound to wonder what the thunder-sticks actually did, but it was obvious they were dangerous. But none of them had heard Charlie cry out, she just wasn’t with them when they went after Owen and one of the humans’ moving nests. But surely nothing could kill too fast for Charlie to make a sound…

Then Blue remembered something. There was another kind of shiny stick the humans had used on the raptors a few times. They shot what looked like teeth with feathers that made whatever they hit fall asleep, and every time they’d been used Blue had fuzzy memories of being in white, strange-smelling rooms with unfamiliar humans milling around and touching her with cold objects. Owen had always gotten them out, and had never seemed too concerned, so eventually they became less afraid of the white rooms, even if they were unpleasant… but now he wasn’t here. Charlie was on her own. The bad humans could have hit her with one of the sleep teeth, and taken her away. It all suddenly made sense! The teeth hurt a little, but in the chaos of the fighting one could have been mistaken for a thorn. Was that what had happened?

Blue knew she had to go back to find Charlie, but she also knew she couldn’t leave Delta and Echo. In their state they’d be helpless on their own. She hadn’t even tried to get Delta to the shelter; it was obvious she couldn’t walk. If the humans came back… A horrible thought crept over Blue. If the humans came back, it wouldn’t matter whether she was there. Even if she avoided the thundersticks herself, Delta and Echo were too far apart for her to protect them both at once, and moving either of them would only hurt them further. She looked around. There were plenty of things to hide behind, but the place was too brightly-lit. It would be impossible to separate one human from the rest of its pack.

Maybe she could just run to the clearing where the fight had happened and try to pick up Charlie’s scent. It wasn’t that far; if Charlie had gone home like Blue hoped, they could easily be back by dawn, and there were always fewer humans around at night anyway. Delta and Echo would be okay for that long, even if Owen or Barry didn’t return by then. They had to be.

Blue paced around the ruins of Jurassic World’s Main Street, looking and listening for the slightest sound or movement that might indicate a hostile dinosaur. There was nothing but the rustle of leaves and the flicker of fluorescent lights. Satisfied, she checked on her sisters again, giving them each a comforting lick. Echo reciprocated the gesture, but Delta just groaned and shifted slightly like she was half-asleep. Blue didn’t tell either of them to keep still and silent until she returned. She couldn’t, the thought was too complex for their simple language. All she could do as she sprinted into the darkness was hope they could understand anyway – or better yet, that they wouldn’t have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I try to adhere to “show, don’t tell” as much as possible, but almost any story will have stuff that isn’t explained. So I’ll try to answer a few of the more obvious questions in the end notes, as well as occasional giving tidbits about the writing process. Think of it like a Director's Commentary.  
> • I don't believe the raptors ever really switched sides. Remember, the pack, just like with other social animals, is a family group. They also had no reason to consider the I. rex an enemy until it sucker-punched Blue (at which point Delta and Echo immediately attacked it). Shoutout to this Tumblr post for a well-written explanation. http://kyro909.tumblr.com/post/122726709741/just-in-case-someone-hasnt-already-pointed-this  
> But basically, it can be summarized as: InGen shot first, the raptors had every reason to see them as a threat, Blue attacking Barry was likely mistaken identity since she looked through the hole and then backed down, and they never attacked Owen.  
> 


	2. Isolation

Charlie stared at Owen, trying to read his expression.

 

The raptors hadn’t taken long to figure out that Owen was only working with the other humans under duress. Even a hatchling would have known: every time he’d spoken to the fat human who was presumably their alpha, the hostility in the air was almost tangible. He’d even attacked him just minutes earlier, but then backed down. The meaning was clear: they were outnumbered, and couldn’t fight off the humans on their own.

 

When they found the giant creature they were tracking, and discovered it could understand their calls, they didn’t know what to do. It seemed to treat them with curiosity, but was definitely hostile toward the humans, on the verge of attacking. Was it friend or foe? They turned to Owen, looking for direction, but the shiny sticks the humans carried suddenly exploded into noise and light and fire. The raptors panicked, scattered, but then regrouped. Blue gave an order to attack, but none of them needed it. The humans had tried to kill them, and Owen and Barry were still trapped in their midst. Outnumbered or not, they _had_ to take them down.

 

It turned out to be remarkably easy. In their fear the raptors barely coordinated their attacks, but the humans’ fat alpha wasn’t around, and they seemed to react blindly, pointing their thunder-sticks at any sound.

 

Charlie found Owen first. He seemed to have lost the humans in the tall grass. Again, she looked at him for direction. They had a chance to escape, but they also had the perfect opportunity to defeat the enemy pack while they were distracted and leaderless. Should they run or fight? But there was something wrong with Owen’s demeanor. He said nothing and did nothing. His eyes were fixed on hers, and although he lowered the thunder-stick he was carrying he did so hesistantly. It was almost like he was… afraid of _her_.

 

Then Owen’s focus shifted to something behind Charlie, and there was a strange hissing noise. She had the thought of turning to see what had gotten his attention, but things happened too fast for her to react. The world in front of her erupted into light and heat and noise, blotting out everything else. There was a feeling of being struck by an immense force that came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a brief sensation of weightlessness, and then nothing.

 

The rocket-propelled grenades fired at Charlie and the _Indominus rex_ by the InGen forces were military surplus models using High-Explosive Anti-Tank warheads. These used a shaped charge to fire a jet of molten metal at immense speeds on detonation, and were originally designed to penetrate well over a foot of steel armor. Normally armies preferred fragmentation or themobaric rounds for use against soft targets, but InGen had decided that the shrapnel from fragmentation rounds was not energetic enough to reliably penetrate the thick hide of an _Ankylosaurus_ or sauropod, but was lethal to their own personnel even tens of meters away, and thermobaric rounds produced such powerful shockwaves that burning debris could be thrown long distances. The HEAT warheads were also perfectly capable of blowing a large and rapidly fatal hole in any dinosaur with a direct hit. Unfortunately for InGen, the weapons were also designed to hit a large, predictably-moving target such as a tank _most of the time_ at a range of hundreds of meters. Hitting a human-sized target was much more difficult.

 

The grenade fired at Charlie was surprisingly well-aimed. One of the four folding fins that acted to stabilize the projectile grazed her back and thigh. The metal sliced deep into her flesh, but the fin was ripped away and the projectile was sent into a tumble. Aerodynamic forces and the thrust from the still-burning rocket motor took over, slamming the grenade into the ground nose-first just a couple meters in front of Charlie. The warhead detonated, but the deadly jet of metal was directed into the soil, and did little besides throwing chunks of sod and grass into the air. The leftover rocket fuel erupted into a fireball, and the remnants of the casing and fins along with the soil excavated by the impact were flung away by the blast. The soil stopped anything travelling in the direction of the rocket’s flight, towards Owen, but Charlie had no protection from the hail of shrapnel. The shockwave tossed her back like a stuffed toy, and the rapid acceleration knocked her unconscious.

 

When Charlie woke up, the first thing she noticed was that she was lying on something cold and soft. The second thing she noticed was that _everything_ hurt. All over her body was a dull ache, punctuated by sharper pain, like cuts or splinters – an especially bad one was on her upper left thigh. There was also a sort of _hot_ sensation, like touching a metal bar that had spent several hours in the tropical sun, but much worse. Her head throbbed with every heartbeat, and the insides of her ears felt like they’d been stabbed. Even breathing was painful; two spots on the right side of her chest were particularly bad: one was like a claw or sharp stick was being hammered into her body every time she inhaled, while the other was like something was inside her, and was trying to tear its way out.

For a moment the raptor lay still, trying to remember how she had ended up here. The memories slowly drifted back into her mind. Owen hitting the fat human, the run through the jungle tracking a scent, the giant creature that could somehow understand them, the battle with the humans, and then… something had happened to her, but what? Slowly, she raised her head and sniffed the air, her neck muscles burning from the effort. Along with the faint smells of her pack, there were stronger odors of humans and the giant, the unique smell of the humans’ moving nests and the thing Owen rode on. There was also upturned earth, burned vegetation, a strange smell she didn’t recognize, and blood.

 

Charlie opened her eyes. The sky overhead was dark, but she could tell that she was surrounded by the tall grass she remembered standing in. In her disoriented state, it took her a second to realize that a sense was missing: sound. The noises of engines and her sisters’ calls and the humans’ shouts had vanished. Listening more closely, she could make out the normal sounds of the jungle at night, but they were faint, and sounded somehow muffled. An idea occurred to her, and she tested it by letting out an experimental squeak. Her voice sounded strange too, as if it were coming from a long way away.

 

Then her brain put the pieces together. Muffled sounds… pain in her ears… she couldn’t hear properly. But even then, it was quiet enough that the fighting had to be over, and no one was calling for her. She started to panic. They left her… they left her! An even worse thought occurred to her: she was the only one left. She was injured, in an unfamiliar place, she couldn’t hear a predator sneaking up on her, and she was alone.

 

Heart racing, Charlie jumped to her feet. At least, she tried to. The moment she put weight on her left leg, her knee collapsed, sending her sprawling on her side, and radiated pain so intense she bit down on thin air (and nearly her own tongue). Despite the pain, she immediately stood again, now on only one leg. She couldn’t hear, so she _had_ to see over the long grass. But her eyes slid out of focus of their own accord, and she could barely balance. The pain in her head and chest got worse. She felt lightheaded, then nauseous. Her good leg began to shake. She blinked slowly and shook her head, trying to clear the feeling, but when she opened her eyes she realized she was toppling over sideways. Out of reflex, she planted her left foot firmly on the ground, but again her knee refused to bear her weight. This time, she let out a scream of pain, but that only made her chest burn even more, like it was being ripped apart from the inside. The pain made her breath and heartbeat speed up, but the faster they went the worse the pain got. The vertigo and nausea got worse too – even if her leg wasn’t hurt, Charlie didn’t think she could stand up anymore. Hyperventilation turned into retching, which turned into vomiting.

 

Eventually though, the pain subsided enough for her to move. She tried standing again, this time more slowly, and managed to get a view of her surroundings. She was still near the edge of the clearing, but not quite where she remembered. About a body-length away was a large patch where the grass had been burned, flattened, and covered in loose dirt. Further in that direction was where she had last seen Owen. Charlie had the vague idea of following his scent, but apart from his general presence there was nothing she could make out. Unlike the Tyrannosaurus, which had an excellent sense of smell, raptors relied on eyesight and hearing. A large, wounded dinosaur had a strong enough odor that it was easy to find, but a human would be much harder, especially with all the other human scents around and the various other strong odors flooding her nose. But the smell of the moving nests and the riding-things… that was much stronger. If she could follow that, then maybe she could reach the others.

 

With some experimentation, she discovered that her left leg could bear a small amount of weight for a short time, just enough for her to hobble forward if she was careful. It was extremely painful though, and she could only manage a few steps at a time before having to rest. Something was wrong with her breathing, too; just hopping half a length made her feel like she’d run all the way from home at full speed. The nausea had gotten a bit better, but that was probably because there was nothing left in her stomach, and she’d thrown up so many times the muscles in her belly were burning.

 

Still, Charlie steadily made her way to where they’d met the giant. The scents of riding-things and moving nests went in two different directions, but only one had the smell of her sisters. She followed that path for a while. The pain in her chest subsided a little, or maybe she was just starting to get used to it, but there was also a strange, almost… itchy feeling that slowly got worse. Then, suddenly, the itch turned into something unfamiliar, but horrible; the sensation of drowning. She was choking, she couldn’t breathe! Ignoring her hurt leg, Charlie spun around aimlessly, her arms clawing at thin air. She fell to the ground, coughing, and for a moment blacked out. When she came back to her senses, her body was still spasming, but the water seemed to have left her lungs. Only… it wasn’t water. She tasted iron, and she realized her head was resting in something wet. Pushing herself to a crouched position, she saw a small, dark puddle. Like birds, raptors had excellent color vision, but it was too dark to make anything out now. The taste gave it away though. Blood. Somehow she was bleeding on the inside, and had nearly drowned in it.

 

Throughout the night’s ordeal, the idea that she was dying had never occurred to Charlie. But now… the raptor didn’t understand what had happened to her, but her intuition told her that it was very, very bad, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Like Delta and Echo, she’d been too afraid of some other creature finding her to make a sound, but now a different kind of fear took hold of Charlie, one which drove away any sense of caution or strategy. It didn’t matter anymore if she attracted every predator on the island, or screamed until she choked on her own blood, or tore herself apart trying to reach the others. She couldn’t stand the pain, she couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening to her, and most of all she couldn’t stand suffering through it all _alone_ any longer. She needed her pack.

 

Charlie raised her head towards the treetops and let out a long, shrill shriek. It was similar to a normal raptor distress call, but there was an involuntary tremor in her voice, creating a variation that would normally have been used by a chick separated from its mother. Without waiting for a response, she threw herself forward again. Some blood had gotten in her nose, making it impossible to smell even the moving nests. She could still follow the single narrow track of Owen’s riding-thing, but the ground was too hard for the other raptors to make footprints. She just hoped they’d kept going the same way.

 

At first, sheer desperation let her ignore the pain, but it couldn’t keep her from running out of breath. After a few minutes she was forced to stop to clear the blood from her lungs again, spraying the ground of the trail with dark droplets. Again, she screamed for help… but this time, there was an answer. It was faint, but with Charlie’s injured ears even her own calls sounded muffled. She couldn’t pinpoint its location, but she immediately recognized the voice, and the meaning.

 

It was Blue, and she was coming to rescue her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> • This chapter, and the one before it, are brought to you in part by WEBMD and similar websites, as well as more than a few graphic photos. On a side note, most of the pictures I found of burns in reptiles and birds are from relatively low temperatures over long time periods (aka snake or iguana sitting on a heated rock which is too hot).  
> • RPG rounds travel very, very fast, around 300 m/s. A raptor is about 4 meters long from nose to tail. From the moment the rocket’s fin hit Charlie to when it detonated in the ground would fit with in a single frame of video (or two frames at 60 fps). The actual movie showed an explosion effect superimposed on Charlie, then cut to Owen being thrown back by the blast with Charlie nowhere to be seen. This is classic Hollywood explosions: nothing actually behaves like this. However, given how close to the explosion he was, a blast powerful enough to completely vaporize Charlie (as opposed to creating large pieces of “shrapnel” would definitely have killed him. The explosion we see on the screen looks most like a thermobaric explosion (it was actually subsonic combustion of gasoline or a similar fuel), but those things kill by ripping your lungs and other organs apart with the pressure wave and have a lethal radius of around 10 m for RPGs. Owen would have been killed or at the very least suffered serious injury, and the Indominus rex would have been killed by the grenade that “missed” her. Even a genetically-modified living weapon won’t have lung tissue far stronger than a real animal.


	3. Rescue

The raptors created by InGen were the fastest two-legged animals in the history of life on Earth, but their speed came at a price. They had a faster metabolism than any other species their size, and the “cheetah speed” sprints they were famous for slowly tore their muscles apart. The “wild” raptors on Isla Sorna walked a fine line; more than two or three hunting attempts in a day could leave them unable to keep up with their prey the next, but so could going more than two days without food.

 

For Blue, it was even worse. Truly wild animals were at least accustomed to starvation and injury, but Owen would never willingly push his raptors this hard, and numerous animal welfare organizations would have had strong words for any animal trainer who did.

 

She had never experienced this kind of exhaustion. The combination of hunger, dehydration, lack of sleep, muscle fatigue, and being repeatedly thrown from moving vehicles and into a concrete wall had taken its toll. She thought getting to the clearing and back would be easy, but soon she was unsure if she could make it at all. Her head still hurt, her vision slid out of focus unless she actively paid attention to some tree or rock in her path, and she felt somehow off-balance, like she was spinning around in place. Her legs trembled, her twisted claw and the cut on her left foot made her flinch on every step, and her tail, which she normally used as a counterweight, seemed abnormally stiff and heavy. Running was impossible now; even at a jog she swayed dangerously from side to side. Eventually she slowed to a sort of limping trot. It was infuriatingly slow, but at least she could maintain it.

 

But then she heard Charlie’s screech. Like with Delta and Echo, the pain was evident in the younger raptor’s voice, but Blue could pick up other things as well: confusion, panic, and a strange raspiness. Blue couldn’t remember any of her sisters making that sound before, but it was a little like Owen had sounded on the several distressing occasions when he had spent several days coughing and sneezing, been hot to the touch, and smelled like some sort of sour or bitter plant. Was Charlie sick? No, she’d been fine before the fight at the clearing – she had to be hurt, or poisoned.

 

An odd combination of worry and relief washed over Blue. Charlie certainly wasn’t safe, but she was alive. It was difficult for a creature who had never experienced loss to comprehend the idea, but ever since her calls for help had gone unanswered there had been a nagging doubt in the back of Blue’s mind. A human would have called it a voice, but for raptors thought wasn’t as deeply linked to communication.

 

Out of the four raptors, Blue was always the planner. If they encountered something unfamiliar, Charlie and Echo would be the first to investigate – Echo with suspicion, Charlie with pure curiosity. Delta was more timid, and usually hid behind them, but would lead the charge against something they _knew_ was a threat, like the human who had tried to steal their food that morning. Blue, though, hung back, watching, waiting to see what the strange creature or thing would do before approaching. That night, almost everything had been unfamiliar – the places, the animals, the objects, the events. She didn’t know what to do, but she knew she didn’t know, and that she could make the wrong choice and get herself or her packmates killed, and the fear of that was worse than the instinctual fear of the loud noises and flashing lights and giant claws and teeth.

 

Still, she planned ahead as much as she could – she didn’t think about it consciously, but it gave her the illusion of control, of safety. She looked for things she could predict: a bush where the humans wouldn’t see her, a human who was focused on the giant raptor and would be easy to ambush, a moment when the giant raptor and the other giant released their grip on each other and Blue could go for the giant raptor’s eyes. When she decided to go back for Charlie, she knew what she would do if she found her at home. She knew what she would do if she didn’t find her at all. But if she found her, and yet… didn’t find her? Nothing could possibly be the right choice. Just thinking about the possibility made her want to flee a nonexistent enemy. She’d kept the thought out of her mind as much as she could, but knowing for sure that Charlie was alive made her realize how much the uncertainty had scared her, the same way the uncomfortable collar the humans put on her was only annoying while she wore it, but once Owen took it off the memory was like being strangled.

 

Blue replied with a pair of barks, one short and one long and falling in pitch. It was an affirmation that she’d heard Charlies distress call, and that she would help. She tried to break into a run again, but her body wouldn’t let her. Even driven by the need to reach her sister as fast as possible, she couldn’t manage more than a jog, and even then she was panting, stumbling, and zigzagging down the path made by the moving nest.

 

A bit further, and Blue heard the cry again, more plaintive if possible, but also much closer. Had Charlie not heard her, or was she in too much pain to wait? Again Blue barked a reply. She veered off the path, going directly towards the sound. It couldn’t be much farther… around a tree, through a bush, over a moss-covered log. Then, through a gap in the undergrowth, she saw a faint red point of light, barely brighter than a star. Before she could process what it was, it disappeared behind a tree, but a few paces further and there it was again. It vanished for an instant, then reappeared. In a flash, Blue understood, and leaped into the air with an excited squawk. She’d seen that red glow a few times before in her sisters’ eyes! Charlie squealed back, and Blue put on a final burst of speed. The light went out again as Blue weaved through the forest, but in its place a raptor-shaped silhouette moved in the darkness. Blue burst through a thicket and back onto the path, and they were reunited.

 

The two raptors sank to their bellies, and for a while they simply enjoyed being together again, sniffing, licking, nuzzling, and exchanging excited chirps and squeaks. For a brief moment, Blue wasn’t the beta, just one tired, frightened animal greeting another. But in the back of her mind, that same presence a human might have called a voice kept reminding her it wasn’t over. They weren’t safe yet.

 

Charlie was limping badly, barely putting any weight on her left leg, and she had the telltale hunched posture of an animal in pain. She smelled like blood, vomit, and burnt vegetation. Her left eye was swollen partway shut, and her breathing was far more rapid than it should have been. On her left thigh was a long, deep, ragged gash like a claw wound, and the right side of her body was covered in dirt and partially-dried blood.

 

Again, Blue was overwhelmed with a wave of conflicting emotions. On the most basic level were joy that Charlie was alive, concern that she was hurt, and the desire to tear the humans that did this to her limb from limb. But there were other feelings too, more complex ones. She’d still had some hope that Charlie would be in good enough shape to help protect Delta and Echo, but now it seemed like if anything attacked them Blue was the only one who could… no, she couldn’t fight either. The journey from the place with all the human nests had taken a lot out of her, she wasn’t sure if she could even manage a jog again.

 

Owen and Barry had taken the raptors out into the forests of Isla Nublar’s “restricted area” since Blue was a year old and Charlie nine months. These outings were a compromise. Such intelligent, energetic animals tolerated confinement in small spaces poorly, as InGen had found out twenty years earlier, but their talent as escape artists meant that a “raptor-proof” enclosure of sufficient size would be prohibitively expensive. But with human supervision and tracking implants, they could be allowed to exercise both their bodies and minds, explore the jungle, and sometimes hunt the island’s non-dinosaurian wildlife.

 

After the first few outings, they had felt completely at home in the jungle. There was no reason to be afraid: they were by far the biggest animals out there, and they soon learned to ignore the distant noises and smells of other dinosaurs. The only time they’d ever been in danger was on the third excursion, when Charlie had slipped while investigating the cliff next to the paddock and nearly fallen seventy feet into the ocean. But they’d never gone this way before, south and west of their home. And it wasn’t just the forest that was strange; the world they knew was gone, replaced by one where humans carried sticks that made flashes of light and deafening thunderclaps, and where the strange noises and smells belonged to giant creatures that could tear a raptor apart as easily as they could tear apart a bird. For their whole lives the raptors had been the cats, and now they had become the canaries. And Blue knew she was too weak to defend herself anymore, let alone her pack. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of what might be lurking in the darkness.

 

Reluctantly, Blue got to her feet. She had to get back to Delta and Echo. She was on the path Owen and the moving nest had followed, probably a bit more than halfway back to the clearing. She took a few steps in the direction of the human nests, looked back at Charlie, and gave a “follow me!” bark. The younger raptor moaned in protest, but slowly rose, teetering on her unhurt leg. Blue took a few more steps, and looked back again. Charlie covered the same distance much more slowly, in a series of unsteady hops. Seeing the pain in her sister’s posture was enough to make Blue wince, but she knew they couldn’t stay here. Charlie could at least walk, and she must have gotten at least partway from the clearing to where they were like this. They could make it back like this, one step at a time…

 

But Blue’s optimism was soon shattered when Charlie’s unhurt leg slid out from under her and she collapsed, coughing so violently her body was nearly lifted off the ground by the spasms and her feet clawed uselessly at thin air. Blue rushed to her sister’s side and nudged frantically at her neck, but Charlie seemed to not even notice. Eventually the convulsions stopped, and she looked up at Blue, her orange eyes showing nothing but terror. There was a small puddle of fresh blood on the ground, and more was dripping from Charlie’s mouth and nose and running down her muzzle.

 

Blue’s own blood nearly turned to ice at the sight. A hailstorm of panicked thoughts raced through her mind. What was happening? Was Charlie dying? No, impossible! She couldn’t - not now, not when they’d just found each other again. But blood from the mouth – something was wrong, very, very wrong. She had to do something, but what? Charlie couldn’t leave… Blue couldn’t let her die… but she couldn’t do anything!

 

Her own heartbeat pounded in her ears like thunder, and her head felt like it was being slammed against a tree trunk. Flashes of color exploded in her eyes every time she blinked. For a while she had felt sick to her stomach, but suddenly it was much, much worse. Her throat tightened, and for a second she imagined she was drowning in blood herself. Then she remembered what the feeling was, and barely had time to stumble off the path before she threw up.

 

Eventually though, both raptors recovered. Charlie tried to rise, but she was shaking – not the violent convulsions of the coughing fit, but shivers of fear, pain, and exhaustion – and her leg didn’t seem to be able to hold whatever weight it could before. Blue briefly considered dragging her, but it was too far back to the human nests. After some trial and error, they discovered a way of walking, with Charlie leaning on Blue and hopping awkwardly on her right leg. Progress was agonizingly slow, and Charlie coughed up more blood several times, but the jungle thinned, changed to grass, and finally, just as the first rays of sunlight appeared in the sky, they collapsed under a sagging awning in the ruins of Jurassic World’s Main Street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> • Yes, I did say that Owen let the raptors out of their cage. My rationale for this is as follows:  
> 1\. That paddock can’t be more than an acre, probably less. It’s really small for four large, highly intelligent animals that can run at 50 MPH. There are all sorts of mental problems associated with keeping animals in small spaces – in fact, the inhumanely small enclosure in the original park may have been part of why The Big One killed so many of her packmates.  
> 2\. The raptors immediately knew they were supposed to follow the scent Owen gave them, which suggests they’d been given similar exercises before. They also didn’t seem to be bothered by Owen’s motorbike, and those things are loud as hell. I would guess that he used it to keep up with them so they could have fairly long-distance runs without going out of sight.  
> The new map released on the Jurassic World website shows that the raptor paddock is on the Northeastern corner of the island, in the restricted area, with what appears to be a fence between it and the main park. Owen would normally take the raptors north of the paddock, deeper into the restricted area and stay far away from the fences. In JW, they went southwest around the mountains and into the actual park where the I. rex was.  
> • If you haven’t figured it out yet, Blue and Charlie both have concussions – Blue from being smacked into the wall of the restaurant, Charlie from the explosion.  
> • The red light Blue saw was NOT the light on Charlie’s camera headset, it was light reflected from one of her eyes (with the shape of raptor heads, it would have to be looking right at you for both eyes to be visible). Eyeshine is caused by a reflective membrane in the back of some animals’ eyes called the Tapetum Lucidum, and is what causes cats’ eyes to “glow” in the dark. Both birds and crocodiles have red, orange, or white eyeshine, so it makes sense that raptors would have it as well.  
> • The raptors can see color. Yes, I did my research. Most mammalian predators like cats and dogs are what is called dichromatic, meaning they have rods and two different types of color-receptive cones in their eyes (as opposed to humans, which have three). Contrary to myth, they can see color, but not very well (in particular, reds are harder to discern). However, birds actually have FOUR different types of cone, which gives them even better color vision than humans, and many species can even see into the near-ultraviolet range. Since the raptors in TLW hunted humans at night, I’m assuming they’re partially nocturnal (like many modern predators), and they have more rods and less cones in their eyes than diurnal species. This means they would see colors as relatively muted compared to humans, but for them it just appears normal.  
> • Charlie is a very silly raptor and almost fell off a cliff. Yeah, they could have put up a fence there, but maybe they figured that since raptors are amazing at jumping and climbing a fence would only make it harder to rescue them if necessary. The best solution would be to put in an electric fence that they couldn’t get over without climbing… but let’s be honest, Jurassic Park/World doesn’t have the best track record on designing enclosures.


	4. Reunion

Owen Grady was not a man prone to swearing. Well, actually that was a lie. While he was never technically a sailor, during his time in the navy he had picked up their habit of inserting profanities into everyday conversation. But he didn’t usually swear in anger, preferring instead to communicate his dislike of people through eye rolls and sarcastic comments.

 

But as Owen looked down on the now-empty raptor paddock from the chopper window, he was just itching for one more person to fuck up so he could verbally tear them a new one.

 

Claire had given orders to proceed as if the park would eventually reopen. This meant that Priority Number One was ensuring the safety of all the human beings still on the island. Priority Number Two was ensuring the safety of all the surviving animals (Owen took some pleasure in noting that Claire no longer used the word “assets”). Claire had also confided in Owen that she had another motive: making the park safe for the swarms of investigators and lawyers that would soon descend on the island. When the original park failed, the vast majority of the staff were already evacuated due to a storm. “Only” four people had died, and one of those had actively sabotaged security systems. InGen had no money to rebuild, and so the escaped dinosaurs had been left to their own devices. But this time, hundreds of guests were injured and dozens of park employees killed. A full investigation would be demanded, the same as if a cruise ship went down with all hands.

 

But before anyone could set foot on the island again, the escaped carnivores had to be returned to containment. According to the briefing Owen got, all of the pterosaurs had been “put down,” and the Suchomimus and Baryonyx had remained in their enclosure, so in practice that meant Blue and the T. rex.

 

The plan, in theory, was to tranquilize both animals from a helicopter. “Why didn’t you do that with the I. rex?” Owen had asked at the meeting. He’d gotten some bullshit excuse about the I. rex’s camouflage ability, at which point he’d pointed out that at the time nobody had known about the monster clawing out her tracking implant. It came to light that the ACU somehow managed to misplace their helicopter pilots. And so, the circus of incompetence had begun. Two pilots were finally located in the mainland aircraft hangar that was being used as a makeshift refugee camp, but the helicopters normally used by Jurassic World were incapable of carrying an eight-ton dinosaur back to her enclosure. The park kept a modified Chinook, normally used as an aerial crane for construction work, at the mainland airport, but it took several hours to have it ready for flight, and by the time it was the sky was nearly black with storm clouds and threatening a deluge at any moment.

 

The only bright spot was Barry. In addition to leading the disorganized InGen assclowns to safety (something Owen was having difficulty caring about), he’d made sure the Mobile Veterinary Units’ stock of tranquilizer rifles made it off the island. In the middle of the fiasco of the InGen troops being torn apart, he’d anticipated having to deal with frightened, uncooperative raptors while Owen hadn’t considered anything beyond surviving the next five minutes. Barry couldn’t pick up on animal body language with quite the same ease as Owen, but the man was a goddamn genius, and Owen told him so repeatedly that morning.

 

It was only after they’d finally gotten aloft that Owen had found out about the last fly in the ointment that nearly pushed him over the edge. No, fly was an understatement. It was like a fucking 747 had crash-landed in the ointment. Like all the animals at Jurassic World, the raptors had tracking implants; he’d never have been allowed to take them out of their paddock otherwise. But these were of a different type; smaller than a penny, powered by body heat, and inserted underneath the spine so that they were impossible to remove without either laparoscopic surgery or evisceration. Unfortunately, the transmitters couldn’t be picked up by ordinary portable antennas, only by the park’s control center… and Claire wouldn’t send anyone to man the control center while there was still a raptor roaming the island. Of course, they had a GPS lock on Blue’s camera headset, and even a live video feed of the Innovation Center, right where Owen had dropped the damned thing when he took it off. Delta’s and Echo’s cameras were face-down in the dirt in the middle of the jungle, and Charlie’s wasn’t transmitting at all.

 

It had been nearly six hours since Owen had last seen Blue. By now, she could be anywhere on the island, and half of that was jungle. If she didn’t want to be found, they were screwed.

 

Owen exchanged a silent glance with Barry as the chopper descended on the wreckage of Main Street and touched down with a bone-rattling thud. The first place to start the search was where they’d last seen Blue. And anyway, he had a suspicion that she’d still be here. It was where her sisters had died.

 

 

 

Everyone who worked with animals knew that at some point, you might be the one to bury them. It was a risk you were supposed to be prepared for when you signed up. But it was impossible to truly be prepared to see the motionless, deserted shell of a creature you’d spent the last five years of your life with.

 

Owen had lost animals before. The worst was back in 2008, during a training exercise hunting for a simulated drug-running submersible. One of his dolphins, Arion, had been caught in a discarded fishing net and drowned. In the aftermath of the accident, he’d said several things he was lucky not to be chewed out or court-martialed for, including an only half-joking suggestion that the ship’s full firepower be turned on the next fishing boat they came across. The incident was also what led him to leave the Navy as soon as his tour was up instead of making a career out of training dolphins.

 

The chopper pilot cut the engine and Owen, Barry, and the five ACU troops accompanying them piled out. Blue could easily be hiding in one of the shops or restaurants, so searching on foot was their only option. Barry, Owen, and one of the ACUs had a tranq; the other four had assault rifles as backup if they were attacked. Owen had a gun for an entirely different reason: planting a bullet in the skull of the first numbskull who pointed a weapon at Blue under any other circumstance. He wasn’t afraid of Blue finding them, he was afraid of him finding Delta and Echo.

 

When he and Claire led the kids to the Hilton where the remaining guests were waiting to be picked up by ferries, he knew he heard Blue calling for her pack, and he thought he _might_ have heard another raptor call back, but there was no point getting his hopes up. The Indominus had grabbed them in its mouth, and even though it didn’t look like it had really bit down, with how hard they’d been flung their necks were probably broken. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he’d find Blue alive. Scientists never actually called it suicide, but there were plenty of cases of animals in mourning starving themselves to death. He didn’t know how Blue would take losing her entire pack in one night, but if she took it badly… she was smart enough to figure out a faster way, like jumping into the mosasaur tank, or ramming herself into a brick wall at top speed.

 

Owen told himself he had to face the reality that he’d have to say goodbye to at least one of his girls that day, maybe even all of them. And, he thought morbidly, perhaps it was better if he saw them when they were still “fresh” enough to be recognizable.

 

“Hey, Owen!” Barry called. “You’re supposed to lead the way!”

 

“Right, sorry.” Owen shook himself mentally, realizing he’d been staring vacantly into space. “Let’s move out!” From where they’d landed, he could see the piece of the dock where the world’s first hybrid dinosaur had met its end. From there, the trail of blood, overturned tables and benches, and smashed storefronts was easy to follow. And there, in the distance, were the shattered remains of a block of faux amber and a mounted dinosaur skeleton.

 

“Well… this is it…” Owen said, half to himself and half to Barry. He turned to the ACUs. “You guys stay back.”

 

“Mr. Grady, we can’t just let you go in alo-“

 

“I said stay the fuck back!” Owen snapped.

 

“That animal may still be out there!”

 

Owen was about to open his mouth, but in his peripheral vision he saw a spark of anger in Barry’s eyes.

 

“S'il vous plaît dites-moi, do any of you gentlemen have children?” Barry asked, his voice dripping with false politeness. It was a long shot, Owen thought: most of them were probably in their 20s. “Wives? Girlfriends? Siblings?” Barry continued, advancing on the ACUs. In spite of himself, Owen smirked. It was like watching a knife hover over the jugular vein of its hapless victim before making a surgical, decisive cut. Someone gave a confused nod. The knife found its target. “Then please, share their names and hometowns. I will gladly take the time to scan the local newspapers for obituaries, and even pay out of my own pocket to fly myself out there so I can arrive at the funeral in an ugly uniform and dismiss the worth of their lives to the weeping masses. Or, if you would prefer a memorial with the privacy and dignity the dearly departed deserve, I suggest you _fermez vos bouches foutus_ and retreat to the _foutu_ chopper.”

 

That got the message across. The ACU squad scurried off with muttered apologies, and Owen and Barry crept into the site of the battle.

 

Something moved in the corner of Owen’s eye, and he whirled toward it. “Shit. Nothing.” He remarked. It was just a piece of trash being blown across the concrete.

 

Right on cue, the pilot’s voice came over the radio, with a strange echoing quality from being played from both Owen’s and Barry’s walkie-talkies. “All right people, stay close. This storm’s really picking up, and I don’t wanna be stranded on this island with vicious dinosaurs roaming around. If I give the word, you need to be able to be back in the chopper in five.”

 

Owen turned to Barry and made air-quotes with the hand that wasn’t holding his tranquilizer. “Vicious dinosaurs.” He grabbed his radio off his belt. “Ask the guy in the Chinook if they know where Rexy is.”

 

Barry sighed. “Owen, don’t.”

 

“Hey, you told the other clowns off. I don’t need to take this shit.”

 

The reply came over the radio. “She’s around Gallimimus Valley. They should have visuals pretty soon.”

 

“Then in less than an hour the only escaped animal in this park that has actually attacked humans unprovoked will be sleeping like a forty-foot scaly baby,” Owen said. There was silence on the other end of the line.

 

“What Owen _means_ to ask,” Barry said, snatching his own radio, “Is how much time we have.”

 

“Couple hours, three tops,” replied the pilot.

 

“Hmm… we can’t cover this whole place in three hours. Maybe half of it…” Owen thought out loud. “Fuck it. Let’s just get this over with.” He turned back towards the shattered amber and started to walk.

 

Again, something moved in Owen’s peripheral vision, appearing and disappearing in a window. Almost like something popping up above the windowsill to get a look at them, then ducking out of sight. “Blue? Is that you?” he called, approaching one step at a time, his tranquilizer rifle pointed at the ground, but still ready to be raised at a moment’s notice. There was a noise like footsteps. “Come on girl, it’s me.” For a moment, there was silence. Owen waited, holding his breath. Then a scaly head peaked out from the doorway of a shop, and two orange eyes met his own.

 

It was funny, Owen thought much later. You always expected time to slow down in moments like this – perhaps thanks to the movies. And Blue was a lot slower than normal, limping across the street to meet him at barely above walking pace. But it felt like everything happened at once: Blue’s delighted screech, her charge, the tranquilizer being knocked from his hands and sent skittering across the pavement, and the raptor practically tackle-hugging him, pressing her forehead into his chest with such force that he stumbled backward and had to wrap his hands around her neck to avoid being bowled over.

 

“Easy, Blue. Easy. You’re okay girl,” He regained his footing, and stepped slightly sideways to put his arm over her back. The chest-pressing was a gesture of submission, and the dominant raptor would ordinarily reciprocate by laying its chin on the subordinate’s neck. Owen’s neck was far too short to do this, but he’d imitated the gesture by accident while attempting to maintain his balance, as had happened numerous times before. Standing to the side was easier though. Contrary to his initial fears, being pushed over didn’t trigger their prey drive, but they could certainly step on his shin or kneecap, which hurt like a bitch, and at the moment he also risked cracking his head open on the cement.

 

Blue tried to lean sideways into him, but then gave a startled squawk and flinched away. “What’s wrong, girl?” he asked automatically. He noticed that her right arm was shaking slightly, as if contact had triggered a muscle spasm, and she was holding it at a strange angle. Shit. He hoped it wasn’t broken. “I’m sorry Blue. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he crooned, embracing her again, more carefully this time. She pressed her head against his chest again, then lifted it and rested it on his shoulder, letting out low chirps and rumbles. Unlike resting the chin on the back of the neck, this was a neutral gesture of affection, and he’d often seen two of the raptors using each other as pillows like a yin-yang symbol.

 

 

Barry had jumped slightly at Blue’s screech, and had been noticeably tense when she approached – it seemed reasonable, since she _had_ nearly torn his face off last night - but finally cracked up when the raptor tried to “preen” Owen’s vest with her front teeth. Owen went through a lot of clothes that way. The noise got her attention, and she gave Barry a similar treatment, disarming him the same way she had Owen. It seemed like the pack was back together – at least, what was left of it.

 

But then a change came over Blue. She stepped back from Barry, and shook her head. Her demeanor was suddenly what Owen could only describe as serious. She slowly, deliberately took a step towards Owen and seized his right forearm in her chairs. “Blue…” he warned. For a moment, he had an instinctive fear of having his hand ripped off, but quickly realized that if she was trying to hurt him she’d have already done plenty of damage. Silently, she turned around and slowly but firmly pulled, not in a jerking motion but hard enough to make him stumble. Was she trying to lead him somewhere?

 

“Okay, I get it, I get it, I’m coming.” Owen started to walk, letting Blue guide him forward. She relaxed her grip slightly, although not enough to let him pull his hand free, and made a chuffing noise, as if to say ‘Now you understand!’ She took him past the doorway she had emerged from, and then… that grill looked familiar. “Oh no,” Owen muttered, then turned to Barry and mouthed: “Echo.” It made sense, if she’d been on Main Street all this time she had to have found them…

Owen didn’t know how raptors in a _healthy_ pack reacted to the loss of one of their own. The raptors had been born in three clutches of three, six weeks apart. Both of Blue and Charlie’s clutchmates had been stillborn or lasted less than 24 hours, as did one of Delta’s and Echo’s. The longest, at 19 hours, was Blue’s clutchmate Chartreuse (Owen had originally planned to call them Blue and Charlie, then named Blue after her stripe and the other hatchling after her yellow-green color to match the pattern, but couldn’t think of color names for Delta and Echo, and ended up using Charlie for the fourth raptor born). But those had happened when they were too young to think of much besides eating and sleeping. He bet they had some kind of ritual though; dolphins and elephants did, and the raptors were as smart as them.

 

But as Blue lead him through the doorway she gave a soft bark, and Owen heard a groan in reply. There were overturned tables, lined up like they’d been dragged there. He looked over, and an eye blinked back at him. “Holy fuck.” Echo was alive! He rushed around the table to examine her, giving her the chance to sniff his hand before touching her. It didn’t look good. She was breathing shallowly, it looked like her side was full of glass shards from the window, and she was covered in what looked like they might be blisters, although it was hard to tell with scales. Before he had a chance to look more closely at her injures, though, Blue gave a ‘Follow Me!’ bark and he was being dragged out the door again.

 

As he stumbled past, he gave a confused-looking Barry a thumbs up. “Tell ACU we’ve got two raptors here!”

 

“What?” Barry asked. Then his face lit up in realization, and he dashed into the restaurant.

 

Owen looked ahead. He already had a suspicion where Blue was leading him, but no… it was too good to be true. There was a collapsed stand that appeared to have sold crappy plastic souvenirs like those stupid umbrellas made to look like a Dilophosaurus frill. Lying in the wreckage, in a pool of blood, was Delta.

 

“Oh, fuck.” Owen whispered. “Oh my God.” Delta was alive, but her breathing was so shallow it was barely noticeable. Her chest and flank were covered in bloody toothmarks that had to be an inch, maybe even two inches wide, and at least twice that deep. Her left leg was horribly broken, with the jagged edges of the bones sticking out of a gash so big Owen could probably have put his hand in it. And there was no way that was the only thing broken. The stand’s wares might have been shoddy, but its construction wasn’t. Delta had been flung into it with enough force to snap two-by-fours like toothpicks. It was a miracle she’d survived at all.

 

Silently, Owen knelt beside the injured raptor and gently stroked her neck. Her arm twitched slightly, and she took a slightly deeper breath, then let it out with a moan. One eye flickered partway open, and swam lazily back and forth in its socket before fixing on him. _Jesus,_ Owen thought. _She’s still conscious._

Slowly, she lifted her head and nudged Owen’s hand, before trying to lick his knee. “Good Girl…” Owen murmured, his voice nearly breaking. “It’s okay, Delta.” Gingerly, he patted her snout. The pain she had to be in was unimaginable. Sure, Owen had broken a couple fingers in his time and it wasn’t that bad, but a buddy of his in high school had broken his leg doing some stupid BMX stunt and the kid was writhing in pain all the way to the hospital.

 

“Barry! Make that three raptors, and we need a vet in here now!” Owen shouted with considerably less enthusiasm. _At least, three for the moment_ , he thought. Delta had lost a lot of blood, and she’d been lying here with a broken leg and who knew what else for more than six hours. “I’m sorry Blue… it doesn’t look good.” He turned to his oldest raptor – or at least where he thought she was standing. But she’d vanished.

 

“Blue?” Owen called, jumping to his feet. “Blue? Where’d you go?” He rounded the corner of the demolished souvenir stand.

 

“What’s going on? What happened?” Barry emerged from the restaurant.

 

“Blue just vanished.”

 

Barry nodded, but then something behind Owen appeared to catch his eye. He stared into the distance, transfixed. “I see her,” he mumbled, pointing down the street, his mouth hanging open.

 

“Where?” Owen turned, and his jaw hit the ground as well. “Oh my god…”

 

It was funny, Owen thought much later. You always expected time to slow down in moments like this – perhaps thanks to the movies. And this time, things really did seem to move in slow motion. Maybe it only worked if you were running. Maybe time slowed down for Blue just a few minutes earlier. Either way, Owen performed his half of the archetypical romance movie sprint across the pavement to meet the two raptors standing side by side, one leaning on the other.

 

The sky, which had been threatening rain for several hours, finally delivered, but Owen felt another, warmer liquid run down his face as he wrapped his arms around his youngest raptor. “Charlie, you’re alive!” he announced. “Four!” he shouted at Barry, who was jogging up to meet them. “Tell them we’ve got four raptors!” Charlie sank onto her side, resting her head on Owen’s lap. Blue leaned over, licking her younger sister’s face, and Owen patted her snout. “I don’t know how you did it Blue, but goddamnit you brought her back alive!” He paused. “You’re a good girl, Blue… you’re a strong, brave, beautiful, clever girl!”

 

As Owen spoke, he undid the fastener for Charlie’s tracking headset and slid it off – with some effort, since the mechanism was gummed up with what he guessed was dried blood. She flinched, and he noticed a small puncture in her neck where it had been. “Whoa, what happened there?...” he turned the mangled device over in his hands. A jagged metal point protruded from the underside by almost an inch, and what he had thought was a peeled-up piece of a cover lined up with it, while the black plastic of the actual cover was bent inward. It had to mean a single piece of metal had been flung by the rocket with such force that it impaled the headset. “Hey, Barry.”

 

“What?”

 

“Come take a look at this.”

 

Barry took the tracker from Owen’s hand and examined it. “Straight through the battery,” he commented. “I guess this explains why it wasn’t transmitting.”

 

“Yeah, and look at this.” Owen pointed to the wound on Charlie’s neck. “That’s right over the jugular, isn’t it? And that thing had to be going as fast as a bullet. If that hadn’t been there… Charlie, I think this goddamn tracker saved your life!” He rubbed the raptor’s snout, and started to examine the rest of her body. It was hard to see how bad things were through the mess of dirt and dried blood, but now that the rain was starting to wash it away, her chin, neck, chest, and flank seemed to be covered in small puncture wounds. One large one in particular seemed to have something sticking out of it. Hoping it wasn’t an exposed rib, Owen slid out from underneath Charlie’s head and moved to wipe the dirt and blood away.

 

But when he brushed the object, he felt the distinctive jagged edge of torn metal. Charlie screeched in pain and thrashed wildly, her toe claw narrowly missing Owen’s shin. “Shit!” he stumbled back, falling to the ground. Blue let out an angry hiss and glared daggers at him, but Barry stroked her reassuringly.

 

“Charlie, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you, girl!” Owen rushed forward to comfort the raptor, laying his arm over her back and stroking her until her breathing slowed back to normal. Blue approached as well, dragging Barry with her, and ‘preened’ Charlie’s face.

 

“That looks really bad,” Barry commented as soon as the immediate crisis was over.

 

“I know. It didn’t even budge when I touched it, it’s gotta be in there deep.”

 

“Embedded in a rib, maybe?”

 

“Maybe.” Owen felt the area around the object. “Fuck, it’s between the ribs.” He laid his head on Charlie’s chest, and listened. “I think it’s in her lung.”

 

“Merde!”

 

Owen fished his cell phone out of his pocket. Two bars. The signal was better at the heart of the park. He dialed Claire’s number.

 

“Hello? This is Claire Dearing.”

 

“This is Owen. Get every vet in this park on the island now!”

 

“What?”

 

“I’ve got four raptors here and three of them won’t last more than a few hours without medical attention.”

 

“All four are alive? But-“

 

“Yeah. I’ll tell you about it later, just get people out here fast.”

 

“All right,” Claire sighed. “I’ll send anyone I can out there. There are already two vets on the team to secure Rexy, so call them.”

 

“Okay, thanks.” Owen hung up tersely, and grabbed his radio. “This is Owen Grady. Please call the Rex team and find out what their status is. We need vets over here.”

 

“Just confirming, vets plural and not medics, right?” the pilot replied. “Do you have injured animals?”

 

“Yeah. Four.”

 

“How urgent is it?”

 

“PDQ urgent. We’ve got a probable punctured lung, extensive burns of unknown severity, and a, um…” Owen wished he remembered the terminology medics used, but realized the pilot wouldn’t understand it either.

 

“Compound fracture of the left tibia,” Barry finished.

 

“All right, I’ll call them,” the pilot agreed.

 

“Are the animals secure?” someone on the ACU team asked.

 

“Not yet, give us a few,” Owen answered. “We’ll let you know when you can approach. In the meantime, try to find some pickups or something so we can get the raptors to the AWF. And uh… Miller, right?” he tried to remember the name of the pilot. “If the rex team says OK, fly out and ferry the vets over there too. We aren’t gonna need to bail out.”

 

“Just call me Jameson,” the pilot replied. “Rex team says she’s already tranqed, they’re just waiting for her to go down. She was perky enough to be chasing Galli’s around, so they think they can wait on stitching her up.”

 

Owen put down the radio and gave Charlie and Blue a long look. They’d have to put the raptors under – aside from the pain, it would take three people to lift them onto a truck, and if they were awake anyone besides Owen or Barry would lose a limb trying to touch them. But Blue at the very least had figured out what guns were. Knocking his tranq away might have been an accident, but she’d grabbed the barrel of Barry’s in her jaws and tossed it away without letting it point directly towards her. There was no way that was a coincidence.

Would Blue attack him if he shot her? If she didn’t, would she ever trust him again? Owen didn’t know. It was a big risk to take… but there might be a better way. The raptors might have seen guns as threats, but what about the darts themselves?

 

“Barry.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I got an idea. Blue’s freaked out by the tranqs, but I think if I just use the darts to inject them manually she might stay calm.”

 

Barry grimaced and shrugged. “You’re still talking about sticking a needle in an animal that can tear you to pieces. It _might_ work, but it’s risky.”

 

“Yeah, but how long do these darts take? Five or ten minutes? Look around, there’s no place where she couldn’t catch us in that time. Besides, I’m not sure she’ll just let us walk around carrying the guns.”

 

Barry sighed and rubbed his chin. “True… I guess there isn’t any safe option. But I think it would be best if you do it.”

 

Owen nodded, and turned to where the guns were lying, well over a hundred yards away. He started to walk, then turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. Blue was following a few yards back.

 

“Actually, I thought of something. Do you think you can find some kind of dish or pan and fill it with water? The girls have gotta be dehydrated. Maybe we can get a little fluid into them before the drugs kick in.”

 

“I’ll check the grill.” Barry passed Owen, heading for the restaurant where Echo was hidden.

 

As Owen approached the gun, he was aware of Blue following him more and more closely until he could feel the warmth of her breath on his back. He reached it, and bent down to pick it up, but there was a snarl, and the ominous tapping of a sickle claw on concrete. _Shit._ He backed away from the weapon, and turned to the raptor, placing his hand on the side of her neck. “It’s all right Blue,” he said, keeping his voice soft and avoiding sustained eye contact. I’m not gonna shoot you… In fact…” Owen had an idea. He looked down slowly and deliberately at the tranquilizer rifle, raised his foot, and stomped on it, breaking the scope, then bending the barrel. “See? The gun is bad, so I’m breaking it.” He had no idea if she’d actually understand any of this, but it was worth a shot. He kicked the gun a few more times, then slowly reached for it again, looking back at Blue. Her eyes were focused on the gun, and her expression seemed more suspicious than outright angry. Owen lifted the butt of the rifle, removed the clip, and dropped the weapon again, kicking it away. “See? Now it’s broken, and it can’t hurt you any more.”

 

Owen headed back to the shattered amber, rubbing Blue’s back with one hand and holding the clip in the other. There were five darts. Ordinarily with the selected dosage one would make a raptor groggy and two would knock it out, but since they were already injured he hoped one would be enough.

 

“Okay, Blue…” he turned to face the raptor and got down on his knees, at the same time fishing a single dart out of the clip. For a moment, her face was almost level with his. Then she too sank to a crouching position and inched forward, pressing her head against his side. “It’s all right, girl…” Owen continued, wrapping his arm around Blue and gently pulling her onto her side. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s just going to sting a little, and then you’re going to fall asleep for a while.” It occurred to him that he was repeating the lie he, and everyone else had heard countless times from doctors. Getting a shot hurt like a bitch, at least when you were five. Then again, she was covered in scrapes, and probably bruises he couldn’t see because of her scales, and her right arm really was being held at a funny angle. This would probably be the least painful thing that happened to her all day. “Good girl…” Owen held the syringe next to Blue’s shoulder. Her breathing wasn’t relaxed, but it was even, and her eyes had slid partway closed. It was now or never. He slipped the needle under a scale, and pushed down on the weighted plunger. Immediately, he felt Blue’s muscles tense up, and the rumble of a warning growl escape her throat. “Blue, it’s okay! Calm down.” Owen continued stroking her side. “Just hold still a little longer… and, we’re done!” he pulled the now-empty syringe out. Blue pushed herself back to her feet and limped a couple paces away, craning her neck to try to lick the new wound. Owen breathed a sigh of relief. He was honestly expecting to come away with this with a few new scars.

 

“Good girl, Blue,” he said, getting to his feet. She twisted her head towards him and gave him what he was sure was a death glare. It was amazing how expressive a creature with very few facial muscles could be. But after a few seconds, she relented, leaning her neck against his side again. _God…_ he’d worked with these animals for nearly five years, but he’d never have expected any creature to be this tolerant. Was their bond that strong, or was she just too tired and miserable to care about any more pain? But she had dragged Charlie what, a mile? Two miles? “Good girl,” he said again. One down, three to go.

 

Blue fought the tranquilizer the longest, staying next to Owen as he went to inject the other three raptors, even as her gait grew more and more wobbly and she started to lean on him for support – nearly knocking him over. Finally, as he slid the fourth syringe into Delta’s flank, she slumped onto her side, weakly trying to lick her sister’s face. Owen looked down at her as he threw the last syringe away. She returned his gaze, desperately trying to keep her eyes open like a small child trying to convince her parents it wasn’t past her bedtime. In spite of the situation, a smile crept across Owen’s face. “You know something?” he told the raptors, or at least the two still awake. “I’ve never regretted leaving the Navy… but I kinda wish we were all in it right now so all four of you girls could win medals. God knows you deserve it.” He sighed as Blue’s orange eyes finally slid closed, and scratched her under the chin. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d lost you.”

%MCEPASTEBIN%

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> • Daddy Owen to the rescue!  
> • HOW IN THE ENTIRETY OF THE HELL DID THIS CHAPTER END UP BEING ALMOST SIX THOUSAND WORDS LONG? I swear I was trying to stick to around 2000-2500 words per chapter, guys!  
> • Charlie’s tracker stopping a piece of shrapnel that would have killed her is inspired by the numerous real-world soldiers, police, and civilians whose lives were saved by a variety of crazy items they had on their persons, including books and cell phones.  
> • According to Wikipedia, only two models of helicopter are capable of lifting a 10-ton underslung load (Rexy is probably a little lighter, but stretchers have weight too). One is the CH-47 Chinook, the other is the Russian MI-10. But the Chinooks are (a) American, and (b) much more common. Also, the helicopter Owen and Co. rode in is a Eurocopter EC130, the same model used by Masrani, and can carry seven passengers.  
> • This will not be the last we see of Barry’s mastery of verbal takedowns.  
> • Animals can’t technically be awarded official medals in the U.S. military (the UK has a medal specifically for animals, though). But plenty of units have given their animals “unofficial” awards. Owen probably argued in favor of one of his dolphins earning a medal at least once.  
> • “AWF” = “Asset Wellness Facility,” AKA Jurassic World’s veterinary headquarters. Animals are mostly treated in the field, but there are holding cages for smaller species and/or juveniles. It’s not on the visitor’s map because it’s not open to the public, just like the control center isn’t on the map.  
> • You may have noticed that Blue's behavior is a lot more affectionate, and... I guess you could call it aggressively affectionate than what's seen in the movie. This is intentional: her emotional state is different. There are several main times Owen interacts with the raptors during the film. 1: in the cage, after the worker falls in, the raptors are pissed off that the guy invaded their territory and tried to steal their food, so they aren't really in the mood to cuddle. 2: In the clearing, Blue is still in full "fight or flight" mode from the gunshots everywhere. She hears him rev the motorbike, which she interprets as a signal to follow him, and does so with no nonsense, like she would during a hunt. 3: Outside the innovation center, all three raptors are still on high alert after the chase, and don't like that there are these strange, unfriendly humans around. 4: Immediately after the Indominus's death, Blue's first instinct is to turn to her parent for comfort, but Owen rejects her. However, she can read his body language well enough to tell that he doesn't really WANT to leave her, so she interprets it as "Alpha has to leave, I have to be patient and take care of the pack." Now, this is six hours later. The adrenaline from all the fighting has worn off. Blue's realized she's actually hurt pretty badly, her sisters are hurt even worse, she can't do anything to help them, they're pretty much helpless if they're attacked, and there's a bunch of scary stuff out there that can eat them. In short, she's in way over her head and she needs help. So Owen is half-right: she's too exhausted and overjoyed that he came back to be "angry" (being mad at someone for being gone too long is a pretty complex emotion for an animal. There are definitely people who swear their pets have that reaction, but from a human perspective it's hard to distinguish from general stress). On the other hand, she's more "pushy," and is trying to *make* him pay attention to what she wants to pay attention with. And yeah, she ain't putting up with no guns either. She was unconscious when Owen was shooting the Indominus rex while Delta and Echo fought it, and him using the guns to help isn't something raptors could communicate (or necessarily understand immediately). 
> 
> Human beings of every culture think in terms of language, but raptors don't. So even though Blue knows the concepts of "thunder" and "stick," and thinks of guns as sticks that make thunderclaps and lightning flashes, and the other raptors probably have about the same concept, they don't necessarily have specific sounds that communicate those concepts, or could communicate what a gun is by combining such sounds. At best, they could come up with a new combination, but one raptor would have to physically show another a gun and communicate: "This sound means this thing."
> 
> That type of learning is great for "when Owen says 'Eyes on me,' he means this," or "when a human makes this sound it means me, and when a raptor makes this sound it means you," but you couldn't tell a complex story or describe something totally unfamiliar in raptor "language" the same way you can in human languages.
> 
> • Find the references I make to the JP films, the novels, and other stuff and point them out in the comments to win a free... low-res image of a gold star. Unlike Hammond, I spare many expenses.


	5. Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone! I'm really sorry this chapter was so late... what has it been, a month?
> 
> Unfortunately, November isn't an excellent time to be writing stories as a college student, what with finals and all (yeah, yeah, some people do NaNoWriMo during college... shut up).
> 
> Also, a late Happy Jurassic World Day to everyone! For the first time, I'm actually publishing a chapter AFTER it happened in-universe, if only by a few hours. And since I'm probably going to be lazy with Chapter 6 too, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance.
> 
> This is the first chapter where I feel I COULD end the story, but I still have a lot of ground left to cover on the fate of the park and the other characters after Jurassic World. Not everything will be raptorsquad-centric, but they'll definitely get a few chapters. I sort of thought about having the non-raptorsquad stuff be a separate fic, but at the same time Owen will still be there, which means even in the chapters where the raptors aren't present they'll be mentioned, and the entire pack being alive would be confusing to anyone who hadn't read this story (implying I have readers)... so everything stays under this banner.
> 
> As always, feedback and comments are appreciated! IHC out!

Delta regained consciousness slowly, like a log drifting across the surface of a still lake before finally coming to rest on the shore. For a while, she was aware of nothing more than the fact that she existed, but slowly, memories and sensations trickled into her mind. Her eyes were closed, but it wasn’t totally dark. She was lying down, on some cold, smooth, hard surface. She had a vague notion of getting up and opening her eyes, but her legs and eyelids seemed like they were somehow not a proper part of her, and there was no point trying to move them.

She knew that yesterday something bad had happened to her and her pack, but what? There had been strange humans around the paddock, strange noises from somewhere far away… she remembered the fat human who radiated an aura of contempt for her and for the rest of the pack that made her instantly distrust him. She remembered him hitting Owen… no, Owen had hit him, and then they had been released and given a scent which led them in a direction they had never gone before. She remembered the giant raptor, the humans attacking them, following Owen to what they thought was safety, then trying to stop the moving nest that was chasing them. She remembered finding the fat human threatening Owen and the humans that had been in the moving nest. She’d separated him from the others, backed him into a corner… at first she wasn’t sure if she wanted to kill him or just drive him away and give him a few scars to remind him not to come back. But then he gave her that look he gave the raptors every time he showed up outside their home, and spoke to her in the same way that always made Delta want to either run away or rip his throat out.

Delta hated the way the man spoke to them, the way he looked at them. He didn’t fear Owen or Barry, but he was terrified of Delta and her sisters… and yet it was a fear without respect. He was afraid of them, and yet eyed them the same way a predator would its prey – no, the way an animal looked at a tree or a piece of meat.

The raptors did not understand ownership in the way humans did. They might claim a physical object, like a toy or a patch of sun or a half-frozen chicken, but it was only temporary. Once they were finished with it, it wasn’t their anymore, the same way a human wouldn’t think of a seat on a bus as theirs once their journey was over. Owen’s and Barry’s riding-things didn’t truly belong to them in the raptors’ minds, they were just the ones they used every day. Territory, though, was permanent. The area around the paddock that the pack explored was _theirs_. They’d learned to tolerate the presence of other humans, but if another pack of raptors had ever trespassed they’d have defended their patch of jungle out of instinct. The paddock itself was even more _theirs_. Only the pack was allowed there: any other human, like the one who had tried to steal food from Echo that morning, was an invader and had to be driven away or killed.

And a second before Delta sunk her teeth into the fat human’s arm, she understood why everything about him felt _wrong_. He looked at other creatures like they were _his._ The raptors had figured out when they were fairly young that they were different from humans, but they always considered them “equals.” Owen and Barry were above them because they were their parents, but they thought of other humans the same way a wild raptor would another raptor that wasn’t part of its pack. But the fat human acted like Owen and Barry were his subordinates when he wasn’t even part of the pack… and the raptors? They weren’t creatures in his mind, they were _things_ , like a tree branch or a dead animal were things. They were only valuable because they were useful, only feared because they were an immediate danger.

Delta had a flash of realization that no amount of scars would ever make the fat human respect them. The raptors had always instinctively understood what an enemy was, although until that night when the other humans – the fat human’s pack – had attacked them the fat human was the only creature they considered one. But now Delta realized that even though he was their enemy, they weren’t his. He feared them, but only in the way that they feared snakes or falling trees; and that kind of fear didn’t make you stay away for good, only stand back until the danger was past. The fat human wouldn’t learn. He had to die. And as Delta had discovered just minutes earlier, humans were surprisingly easy to kill.

But after she killed him… Delta’ memories were patchier. There were the humans from the moving nest, and Owen was friendly with them for some reason. Delta remembered the shock and rage she felt when Blue was struck by the giant raptor, leaping at it and clawing wildly, trying to put out its eyes, and then… pain. Nothing but pain, so bad she wished her heart would just stop beating. In her panic, she’d tried to get up, but her leg… exploded. She’d lain there, as still as she could manage, wanting desperately to cry out but too afraid of the giant raptor hearing her. At some point, Blue had come back and comforted her, but then she’d left again, and Delta had been in and out of consciousness, barely aware of her surroundings. Then Owen returned. Delta’s last memory was of his voice, saying something in a soothing tone, and the warmth of his hand resting on her neck.

 

* * *

 

“Hi, you’ve reached Melissa Grady. I’m away from my phone right now, so please leave a message at the tone and I’ll call you back. Thanks!” BEEP.

“Hey Mom, it’s me, Owen. Sorry I didn’t get any of your calls or messages; there’s been a bunch of people trying to call their families with the fiasco going on and the crappy network here got backed up. Uhh… I just wanted to let you know that I am okay, I am not injured, and I haven’t been eaten. Let’s see… yeah, there was a breakout at the park, and some people got killed. I was involved, and so were my raptors, but we’re definitely not at fault for anything that happened, and might have actually saved a few lives.”

Owen flashed an uneasy grin at the young keeper slouching against the wall of the AWF. He _technically_ wasn’t lying when he omitted the detail that his animals had killed people… besides, nothing would be conclusive until the autopsy reports came in. Well, apart from Hoskins.

“But anyway, I’m really sorry but I’m not going to be home for Christmas. I’m not like, in jail or anything, but the girls got really badly hurt during the… incident, and I need to be with them full time for a while. I’ll call and explain more when I can, but I can’t make any promises. So, yeah… I love you, and hopefully I’ll talk to you soon… Oh, and do yourself a favor: just don’t read any of the bullshit you see in the news, all right? Nobody but a few people on park staff actually know what happened, so anyone claiming they’ve got the full story is full of shit. Uh, I love you, I’ll call you later, I’m gonna be real busy these next few days so don’t get too worried if I don’t answer your calls, and just in general don’t worry about me, I’m okay. Bye.”

Owen hung up with a sigh. The last several hours had been less action-packed than the previous day, but no less stressful. The raptors were rushed to the AWF as soon as Delta was unconscious, and once he’d given the vets a description of everything that happened Owen was thrown out of the OR on his ass. At first, he’d tried getting some sleep, but how the hell were you supposed to sleep on a prognosis of “maybe?”

About an hour later, they’d given him an actual diagnosis. He almost wished they’d filled it with medical jargon, because the details were painful just listening to.

Blue’s right arm was broken, as were two fingers, her right sickle claw, several vertebrae in her tail, and a third of her ribs… and she was in the best shape.

Echo had dislocated her right hip and partially fractured the femur on the same side. Almost half her body was burned, although most of that was superficial or partial thickness, and the areas where being splashed with burning oil had caused third-degree burns were small enough that the vets were able to close the wounds by stretching the less-damaged skin. She was covered in cuts from broken glass, and one bullet had gone through her tail while another glanced off her shoulder blade and broke two ribs on its way out.

Charlie had minor burns, and the vets ended up spending nearly four hours picking shrapnel out of her. Both her eardrums were perforated by the blast and her left knee was dislocated and severely sprained. The piece of the rocket Owen was worried about had punctured her right lung. Fortunately, the fragment itself combined with clotting blood had kept more than a few small bubbles of air from getting into her chest cavity, but they drained over a liter of blood and other fluid out of her lung and chest 

…And then there was Delta. Her left leg and right arm were both a complete mess, and her left shoulder blade and several ribs had cracked. Thanks to the torn flesh around the fractures, combined with the deep puncture wounds from the Indominus’s serrated teeth, she’d lost almost a third of the blood in her body. 

Owen knew he should be happy that they had even survived – and he was. When he got the news that all four raptors were expected to not only live, but make a full or near-full recovery, he had to fight the urge to attempt a backflip from sheer joy - it was probably a good thing he didn’t; even in his twenties he was no gymnast. But thinking ahead… the poor girls were going to be _miserable_. It would be a full week before Charlie could put weight on her injured leg, two weeks for Echo, and at least a month for Delta. And even after that, it would be another two or three months before they could return to their normal runs in the forest. Owen had no idea how he’d keep them entertained for that long.

But at least in the moment, he could try to make the next few days less uncomfortable.

The raptors were being held temporarily in the AWF’s largest indoor pen for observation. It was meant to hold pachys, gallis, or babies of larger herbivorous species, but since it had steel bars going from floor to ceiling it was at least raptor-resistant. But the place looked like a goddamn prison cell. So Owen had spent the second half of the raptors’ surgeries raiding the Hilton’s laundry room for as many blankets, towels, and pillows as he could fit into a pickup bed and arranging them into a nest. He also grabbed a few old shirts from his bungalow. The raptors had spent the first few months of their lives there, at least after the first week when they were too small and frail to be outside the climate-controlled nursery. Of course, eventually they had to be moved permanently to the paddock; aside from being strong enough to seriously injure a person, by the time Blue was nine months old they were both agile enough to effortlessly jump onto furniture and heavy enough to knock it over by doing so. And then there were their tails! People joked about large dogs’ tails being like battering rams, but dog tails weren’t six feet long, too rigid to be raised vertically or tucked under the body, and as heavy as a sledgehammer. If a raptor in a house turned around without using extreme caution (which they rarely did) something was going flying. But even if it had been over four years since they’d set foot in the bungalow, Owen hoped the smell would help them feel safe.

Putting his phone back in his pocket, Owen returned to the veterinary building and made his way through the multiple gates that separated the outside from the holding pens. He knelt down next to the bars and looked in. All four raptors lay sprawled on their sides, the only movement the slow rise and fall of their chests. Seeing them totally unconscious on a table, covered in surgical drapes, with masks awkwardly strapped over their mouths and noses and tubes sticking out of their throats and chests had been sickening. Owen was never normally grossed out by medical stuff; the time a dolphin had accidentally knocked him off a platform and he’d torn his shin open, he’d calmly discussed the weather with the medics while they stitched him up. Or something like the weather anyway, he didn’t remember it that well. But it was different when the animals you regarded as family were being cut open and sewn back together. As a kid, he’d always made fun of his mom for having to leave the room at the doctor’s office whenever he got a shot, but now her squeamishness seemed perfectly reasonable.

Now though, they seemed… peaceful. If it weren’t for the bandages and casts, Owen might have though they were just asleep, not drugged. Well, actually Blue _was_ asleep. The drugs had worn off a while ago, while Owen was out collecting blankets, but according to the vets she’d only woken up for about five minutes and hadn’t taken any interest in her surroundings, just fumbling her way to the water trough embedded in the pen wall, getting a drink, and curling back up. It wasn’t really surprising: raptors didn’t sleep as much as big cats, but they still averaged 12-14 hours per day, and Owen suspected she hadn’t slept at all that morning.

Owen debated whether to actually enter the cage. Blue was going to be _pissed_ when she realized her claws had been filed down. They’d done it to all four raptors, in the hope of keeping them from tearing their stitches out. Spraying the wounds with something foul-tasting would stop them from chewing on them, but that didn’t help much with animals who had six-inch long claws. But even without claws, she could do serious damage with a bite, or just the sheer power of her leg muscles. Ordinarily, the rule was not to go into an enclosure with an animal that was agitated or injured. But his intuition told him to go in. Waking up injured and in an unfamiliar place was stressful enough, but if he was watching them from outside, or worse, wasn’t there at all, they might think the pack had been separated, or even that he caused their captivity – which he sort of had, but even the most intelligent animals hardly ever understood “it’s for your own good.”

Going into the cage wasn’t without risk. But Owen had trusted his gut many times with the raptors, and the only times when he’d been wrong were when he’d underestimated their intelligence or their loyalty. He shouted at the ceiling to unlock the gate, and slipped in, shutting the steel door behind him. In retrospect, he wished Barry were here; it was possible the raptors would read too much into his absence. Owen hadn’t seen what exactly happened when Blue attacked Barry in the clearing, but Barry said he’d made the mistake in the heat of the moment of turning his back on her and running away, triggering her chase instinct. Then again, apart from being a little reserved at first she hadn’t had a problem with him that morning. It didn’t matter either way though; Barry was currently asleep in his apartment. For at least the next few days someone who the raptors trusted needed to be nearby all the time, so the plan was for Owen and Barry to stay with them in shifts. Barry had always hated coffee, and claimed that caffeine in general gave him migraines, so the all-nighter had been harder on him, and Owen had volunteered to take the first shift.

For a long time, Owen waited, watching the raptors’ chests slowly expand and contract. Occasionally Blue’s toes, fingers, or eyelids would twitch, but the others were almost perfectly still. Theoretically it took about half an hour to recover from anesthesia, but Owen hadn’t actually bothered checking the time.

Then, Delta stirred. At first it was subtle, just the slow movement of her eyelids, but then she took an extra-deep breath and released it as a long, whining sigh. Her head shifted slightly, and she flexed and relaxed her fingers and toes as if testing whether they still worked. Owen got to his feet, but hesitated. He didn’t want to startle her with sudden contact. He’d wait until he was sure she knew who he was.

“Delta?” he said softly. Delta tilted her head towards him, opening her eyes partway. Her gaze flitted around the room.

She curved her body, first rolling further onto her back, then the other way, drawing her right foot underneath her body and extending her left foot against the concrete. Normally the move would have rolled her carried her into a “sitting” position, but this time the moment her left foot touched the floor she let out a squawk of pain and jerked it back.

Owen swore under his breath and rushed forward, placing a hand on the struggling raptor’s neck. “Delta, it’s okay! It’s me!” he tried to keep his voice as calm and level as possible. “Eyes on me. Good girl.” He ran his hand down Delta’s neck and slid his leg underneath her head, feeling the tension and a tremor in her muscles. “It’s going to be all right.” He continued to comfort her, stroking her chest and forehead until the shivering stopped and her pupils, which were dilated from fear, shrunk again in the glare from the cage’s fluorescent lights. The cast prevented the broken bones from moving, but her leg muscles had been badly torn and even with painkillers the injured areas would be tender for a while.

One by one, the other three raptors awoke. Echo was more subdued and cautious, figuring out that her leg wouldn’t support weight without hurting herself and not even attempting to get to her feet. That wasn’t a great sign, though, since with her burns ANY movement would hurt. She was on a higher dosage of painkillers, but even so Owen could see her wince just from the skin on her chest stretching as she breathed. Charlie, on the other hand, was completely confused by waking up in an unfamiliar place, and immediately tried to jump to her feet. When she tried to put weight on her knee she let out an earsplitting screech and toppled over, but panicked and got up again, hopping wildly and nearly slamming her head into the cement wall. Luckily, Owen was able to catch her and roll her back onto her side without being beaten, and with help from Blue, who had been woken up by the noise, he was eventually able to calm her down. Blue, for her part was, as predicted, pissed off when she realized her claws had been filed. She hissed at Owen and swatted her arm at him, then stalked into a corner and glared. But after a while, she approached again, creeping towards him with her head lowered and making a series of low-pitched chirps. This was a gesture he’d only seen a few times. Part of it was submissive, but there was something else as well.

Three years ago, after Blue and Echo’s fight, the two had been separated for several days. None of the raptor handlers from the original park had returned to Jurassic World, but before Blue was born, Owen and Barry had read every single entry from the keepers’ records, and the raptor known as “The Big One” taking over the pack and killing most of the other members was as fresh in their minds as if they’d been there themselves. At first they’d tried to reintroduce the two with steel bars separating them, but they’d been so irritated by being stuck in small cages that they ignored each other apart from a little hissing and snarling, and eventually Owen and Barry had to concede defeat and attempt a riskier option: returning all four raptors to the paddock under strict supervision.

The decision wasn’t made without evidence it might work, though. Owen and Barry weren’t there for the fight, but the security footage had shown something unexpected. Delta and Charlie had practically pulled Blue and Echo apart, and attempted to calm them down and lick away the blood until ACU arrived with tranquilizers. And infighting had never been a real problem for the pack apart from a few squabbles, while the original park had a serious physical altercation nearly every month.

For a whole day after being “reunited,” Blue and Echo just avoided each other and sulked on opposite sides of the enclosure, with Charlie and Delta anxiously shuttling between them and Owen making a point of giving them equal attention. But the second day, Blue had gradually allowed Echo to get closer and closer before hissing or stalking off, and then… Echo had approached in the exact way Blue was doing now…

Owen would have just chalked it up to submission, but then Blue reciprocated the gesture, albeit with a more confident posture. After that, there was no other explanation. It was an apology. Was she… feeling _guilt_ for her reaction to waking up in a place she’d always been uncomfortable in, and realizing that her main way of defending herself had been taken away?

“Oh, Jesus… Blue, c’mere.” Owen got to his feet, opening his arms. Blue rushed forward, pushing her head into his chest and letting him pull her into a hug. “It’s okay, sweetie,” Owen reassured her. “I’m not angry at you, girl. None of this is your fault…” God, it was hard to believe that these were the same animals that had killed over a dozen people yesterday.

Eventually, Owen was able to get all four raptors calmed down. Admittedly, it wasn’t that difficult; Delta and Echo were still half-asleep, and although Blue and Charlie were slightly more active they were still yawning and blinking slowly. But none of them were willing to actually fall asleep, and whined pitifully if he stopped paying attention to them for more than a minute. At least he’d expected something like this: that was why he’d “borrowed” half the hotel’s laundry. 

Charlie was able to figure out how to move with her splinted knee, and managed to unsteadily hop over to the nest on her own, but Delta had to be supported by Owen the whole way. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to try to move Echo, but after she tried to wiggle her way across the rough concrete, crying in pain the whole time, he realized he couldn’t leave her on her own. She was too heavy to pick up, but with her half crawling and half being dragged, she managed to get onto the blankets, and immediately relaxed – apparently the soft surface was easier on her burned skin. A bit of rearranging later, and Owen ended up resting against the wall, with a raptor snuggled up on either side of him. The situation was almost too familiar… back when the raptors were babies he used to be able to lie in bed with all four of them on his lap. Now, at best one would fit for very generous definitions of “on” and “lap.” But he still ended up with his chest and legs pinned underneath three scaly heads and a fourth tucked under his arm. He might have still been able to get up with some difficulty… but he didn’t want to. The pack was finally back together, and he finally had time to just appreciate that. Sure, the next month or so was going to be rough, but Owen was confident that they’d make it through, just like they’d somehow made it through the last hellish night.

Right now, though, all five of them needed to get some rest. Owen looked up at the security camera and asked for the lights to be turned off – and, surprisingly, after a few seconds it actually happened, leaving only the dim glow of a few signs and indicators. A song popped into his head, one he remembered from a movie he loved as a kid. He’d told himself when he had children, he’d sing it to them as a lullaby – and sure enough, he’d used it when the raptors were younger. He’d also been stupid enough to learn it on the guitar – God knew why; the first and only time he tried to play with the raptors around they’d eaten half the strings. He doubted they understood the words, but then again babies didn’t understand words either – hell, half the songs he liked as a teenager he didn’t know the lyrics to, and the soothing tone definitely seemed to help them sleep when they were nervous. And the words certainly helped _him_. If he thought about it, they were kind of appropriate...

Softly scratching his scaly daughters’ necks and shoulders in rhythm as they drifted off to sleep, Owen began to sing. “Don’t lose your way, with each passing day. You’ve come so far, don’t throw it away…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> • AND THERE’S THE TITLE DROP. Admittedly, not explicitly referenced. Incidentally, like everything I write, this story didn’t get a title until I was thousands of words in. And honestly most of my ideas sucked. But then I rewatched The Land Before Time, and I had a mental image of Owen singing “If We Hold On Together” to baby raptors, and it was so adorable I knew I had to work it into the story somehow… and then I realized I had a title.  
> • Raptors, like many modern animals, have an instinctive fear of snakes. This comes from their Deinonychus “ancestors.” Fossilized snakes have been found from as far back as the Jurassic. Fossils that are known to be of modern venomous snake lineages only date back to around 20 Mya, but recent research shows that all snakes, as well as several groups of lizard including monitor lizards, iguanas, and the gila monster, evolved from a common ancestor with toxic saliva. “Nonvenomous” species are either secondarily nonvenomous, or actually are venomous, but the venom that we didn’t notice because it wasn’t dangerous to humans (e.g. iguanas). Incidentally, this also strongly suggests that at least some mosasaurs were also venomous, since they’re close to monitor lizards. Unfortunately JW couldn’t really test this on its mosasaur because the genome gaps were likely filled in with monitor lizard DNA, so venom-producing genes could have “cross-contaminated” it. Anyway, it’s plausible that Deinonychus 110 Mya could have encountered venomous snakes. They might not have had true fangs, but they could still have had poisonous saliva that could be life-threatening for a fairly small dinosaur. Also, Isla Nublar is probably home to many snake species such as coral snakes which are native to Costa Rica, so Owen most likely trained the raptors to stay away from snakes. Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8331-lizards-poisonous-secret-is-revealed/  
> • Echo was cut by broken glass (I took the liberty of adding a lowerable window in front of the grill for use in bad weather), but Delta wasn’t despite crashing through a window. This is because the window in the lab was a floor-to-ceiling window in an area where people rolled carts around and people could walk into it, so it was made of safety glass, while the one in front of the grill was just a normal plate glass window.  
> • You might notice that Blue never apologized to Barry for attacking him in the clearing. That’s because from her perspective it wasn’t a big deal any more than bumping into Delta while chasing Claire in the MVU was. Essentially she saw someone diving for cover, it trigger her chase instinct and/or she thought it was one of the InGen mercenaries, and then it turned out to be Barry, she broke off the attack, and Owen gave the signal to retreat. But since Barry wasn’t actually injured, from Blue’s POV it was just an accident without any real consequences. On the other hand, with Echo or Owen she lashed out at a packmate on purpose. Now, since Owen is her alpha, it was safe for her to apologize and be affectionate immediately, but Echo challenged her for dominance, so if she apologized without Echo making the first move it would essentially be conceding defeat.


End file.
